Salt and Cyclone

Verse 1

I came back to the room where the salt grows on the walls I came back to the silence that held me once before My hands open the way they always do My throat closes the way it always does And the room the room the room

Pre-Chorus

Mud and salt and crystal rock and water None of them the answer The answer is the gap

Chorus

And I am the spiral returning to the center I am the spiral crusted and changed I am the spiral and the returning is the brightest thing I have ever been

Verse 2

[spoken, low] [drone only] My grandmother stood here thirty years before me She opened her hands toward the white wall and the wall opened back - not a door not a miracle just the faintest contrast white showing where white had been disturbed She listened and the silence held and that was enough

Pre-Chorus

voice enters above drone

The chain is not a metaphor The chain is a gesture repeated across time in the same room at the same spot

Chorus

full arrangement

And I am the spiral returning to the center I am the spiral crusted and changed I am the spiral and the returning is the brightest thing I have ever been

Bridge

The room decays The room completes The room becomes what it was always going to become And I become what I was always going to become And the becoming is not destruction is not destruction is the thinnest wall where something burns through

Final Chorus

[soaring] [upward leap] [all instruments] I am the spiral returning to the center I am the spiral crusted and changed I am the spiral and the returning is the brightest thing I have ever been the brightest thing I have ever been

Outro

[drone fades] [single voice remains] Mmm... the returning is the brightest thing I have ever been